The former West Indies player believes his poor showings impacted on the less experienced batsmen.

“Scoring four runs in three innings – that is very poor and I also believe that hampered the team significantly for the fact that I was responsible to play the experienced role in terms of letting the other batsmen bat around me and it did not come to fruition at all,” he said.

“The preparation before the game, we worked very hard preparing ourselves in the nets, doing our physical and batting as much as possible, but when the game comes around it wasn’t really conducive for us. Our performances never really showed the hard work we had put in.”

Leewards were knocked out of the competition after they failed to win a single match in Group B, finishing at the bottom of the table with negative five.

As the team prepares for their opener against CCC on March 1 at Warner Park in St Kitts, Joseph warns that players are not getting adequate preparation time and/or on-field experiences within the sub-region.

“We have not had competitive cricket of high standard in the Leeward Islands whether it is abandoned for whatever reason,” the batsman said.

“We in the Leeward Islands, we know what is happening in our local leagues and in most of the countries it is very difficult with how they play in their local leagues. So as players we’re not playing enough cricket. If you bring players from Barbados and Trinidad into our situation, I think they would do even worse than we are doing at the moment.”

Joseph added he is happy that the newly elected LICA body has promised to focus on the development of young cricketers.

“They told us that they have plans in place to get all the Leeward Islands tournaments back on stream, even the under-19s and the under-15s and under-17 tournaments, and I think that if we get the opportunity to contest in those tournaments that we would be better prepared for the West Indies tournaments,” he said.

Following their Four-Day opener against CCC, Leeward Islands will face Jamaica in a day/night fixture from March 7 to 10, also at Warner Park.